By: History.com Editors

1886

The Haymarket Square Riot

History.com Editors

Engraving of a scene from the Haymarket Riot

Stock Montage/Getty Images

Published: March 03, 2010

Last Updated: February 18, 2025

At Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, a bomb is thrown at a squad of policemen attempting to break up what had begun as a peaceful labor rally. The police responded with wild gunfire, killing several people in the crowd and injuring dozens more.

The demonstration, which drew some 1,500 Chicago workers, was organized by German-born labor radicals in protest of the killing of a striker by the Chicago police the day before. Midway into the rally, which had thinned out because of rain, a force of nearly 200 policemen arrived to disperse the workers. As the police advanced toward the 300 remaining protesters, an individual who was never positively identified threw a bomb at them. After the explosion and subsequent police gunfire, more than a dozen people lay dead or dying, and close to 100 were injured.

History of May Day

Historian Yohuru Williams gives a crash course on a riot in Chicago's Haymarket Square that changed the labor movement in the United States.

The Haymarket Square Riot set off a national wave of xenophobia, as hundreds of foreign-born radicals and labor leaders were rounded up in Chicago and elsewhere. A grand jury eventually indicted 31 suspected labor radicals in connection with the bombing, and eight men were convicted in a sensational and controversial trial. Judge Joseph E. Gary imposed the death sentence on seven of the men, and the eighth was sentenced to 15 years in prison. On November 11, 1887, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, August Spies and Albert Parson were executed.

Of the three others sentenced to death, one died by suicide on the eve of his execution and the other two had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment by Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby. Governor Oglesby was reacting to widespread public questioning of their guilt, which later led his successor, Governor John P. Altgeld, to pardon fully the three activists still living in 1893.

Timeline

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Citation Information

Article title
The Haymarket Square Riot
Website Name
History
Date Accessed
March 25, 2025
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
February 18, 2025
Original Published Date
March 03, 2010

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